DC School Rankings are Abysmal - Charters Too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Irrelevant comparison. What I'd love to see is how DCPS ranks vs other large urban districts. Anyone has a good link?

I would love to see this. If you listen carefully to Kaya Henderson's language, she carefully says something like "fastest improving urban school district" or something along those lines. It's a very specifically parsed goal. I'd be curious to see the measuring stick they are using.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a black person it pains me to say its largely the percentage of poor blacks in DC that causes a lot of that last place finish. Many generations of low/no opportunity, discrimination etc. The fact is whites in DC have the highest score of all "states" on that website. So OP by your selection criteria (this website) DC has the best public schools in the country.

(Or maybe as others have said above, income and test performances correlate.)

Not entirely true...check the graduate rates for DCPS, and compare them to Baltimore City, BMORE tops DC in the Category...u telling me that DC is poorer than BMORE? Poor or not DCPS sucks regardless of income. Trust me those wealthy whites kids aren't getting a proper education either...I dont care what the school cheerleaders proclaim on this site

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Yea its not fair to compare DC to STATES...but because its a district thats what usually happens, even so DC is bad when compared to other cities as well, a lot of the charter schools are a sham, even the elite one's in NorthWest that all the affluent whites are trying to get their kids into are subpar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Irrelevant comparison. What I'd love to see is how DCPS ranks vs other large urban districts. Anyone has a good link?

Try Council of Great City Schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Yea its not fair to compare DC to STATES...but because its a district thats what usually happens, even so DC is bad when compared to other cities as well, a lot of the charter schools are a sham, even the elite one's in NorthWest that all the affluent whites are trying to get their kids into are subpar

Where do you live and where are your children enrolled?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a black person it pains me to say its largely the percentage of poor blacks in DC that causes a lot of that last place finish. Many generations of low/no opportunity, discrimination etc. The fact is whites in DC have the highest score of all "states" on that website. So OP by your selection criteria (this website) DC has the best public schools in the country.

(Or maybe as others have said above, income and test performances correlate.)

I have to wonder how much of the struggles of low income African- Americans today are due to the terrible conditions in most African-American schools in the South until school desegregation, which didn't happen in many areas until the 1960s and the economic need for children to leave school to work in the fields. So many families who moved to cities weren't able to help their children learn to read, etc. And racism led to white flight and declining tax revenues to fund urban schools until fairly recently. We have got to find a way to close the achievement gap. I wonder when we'll have results to assess whether near universal early childhood ed is working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a black person it pains me to say its largely the percentage of poor blacks in DC that causes a lot of that last place finish. Many generations of low/no opportunity, discrimination etc. The fact is whites in DC have the highest score of all "states" on that website. So OP by your selection criteria (this website) DC has the best public schools in the country.

(Or maybe as others have said above, income and test performances correlate.)

Not entirely true...check the graduate rates for DCPS, and compare them to Baltimore City, BMORE tops DC in the Category...u telling me that DC is poorer than BMORE? Poor or not DCPS sucks regardless of income. Trust me those wealthy whites kids aren't getting a proper education either...I dont care what the school cheerleaders proclaim on this site

If you click on and go into District profiles you can compare DC to comparable cities. It is doing better than Cleveland, LA, Baltimore City and Detroit. It is lagging behind NYC, Chicago and Boston. I did not look at all the cities because I don't think some of them are comparable. I lived in Tampa, FL (Hillsborough County) and there is no way you can compare Tampa to DC. Therefore, some of the comparisons don't correlate. I don't know enough about Dallas, Houston, and others to have an opinion.

[Anonymous]

When ranked with other urban school systems, DC is around the national average, which I think would surprise a lot of people. For example, NAEP’s 2013 ranking of 4th grade reading scores for urban school systems showed that DC scored worse than NYC, Atlanta, and Boston, but better than Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Fresno, Cleveland, and Detroit. The rankings also showed -- aside from what other posters have correctly noted about DC's high SES students outscoring the rest of the nation -- that DC's overall concentration of high-scoring students is above the national average. 8 percent of DC students have advanced reading scores, compared to only 7 percent for NYC and 6 percent for Boston. Indeed, DC’s percentage of advanced scoring students put it in the same company with some of the highest scoring urban school systems in the country, including Hillsborough County FL (10 percent), San Diego (8 percent), Austin, Texas (11 percent), and Charlotte NC (11 percent). http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_tuda_2013/#/tuda-performance

People really need to ignore this false advertising slogan about DC as “the worst school system in the county”. As mentioned again and again, DC gets inappropriately ranked “51st” among states – when it’s idiotic to compare one single school system to 50 averages of scores of school systems (plural) in other states. This not only matches up two entirely different data sets, but allows every other urban school system in the country the unfair advantage of hiding behind the artificially high test scores of rural and affluent suburban school systems. The closest measure of DC “as a state” would involve lumping it in with MD or VA, which would put DC somewhere between 3rd (Maryland’s ranking) and 7th (Virginia’s ranking). But how useful is that comparison, really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a black person it pains me to say its largely the percentage of poor blacks in DC that causes a lot of that last place finish. Many generations of low/no opportunity, discrimination etc. The fact is whites in DC have the highest score of all "states" on that website. So OP by your selection criteria (this website) DC has the best public schools in the country.

(Or maybe as others have said above, income and test performances correlate.)

Not entirely true...check the graduate rates for DCPS, and compare them to Baltimore City, BMORE tops DC in the Category...u telling me that DC is poorer than BMORE? Poor or not DCPS sucks regardless of income. Trust me those wealthy whites kids aren't getting a proper education either...I dont care what the school cheerleaders proclaim on this site

If you click on and go into District profiles you can compare DC to comparable cities. It is doing better than Cleveland, LA, Baltimore City and Detroit. It is lagging behind NYC, Chicago and Boston. I did not look at all the cities because I don't think some of them are comparable. I lived in Tampa, FL (Hillsborough County) and there is no way you can compare Tampa to DC. Therefore, some of the comparisons don't correlate. I don't know enough about Dallas, Houston, and others to have an opinion.

Thank you, will check out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Yea its not fair to compare DC to STATES...but because its a district thats what usually happens, even so DC is bad when compared to other cities as well, a lot of the charter schools are a sham, even the elite one's in NorthWest that all the affluent whites are trying to get their kids into are subpar

Where do you live and where are your children enrolled?

Mitchellville/woodmore area

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Yea its not fair to compare DC to STATES...but because its a district thats what usually happens, even so DC is bad when compared to other cities as well, a lot of the charter schools are a sham, even the elite one's in NorthWest that all the affluent whites are trying to get their kids into are subpar

Where do you live and where are your children enrolled?

Mitchellville/woodmore area

Did you miss this part?


"DC has a 50-point gap between eligible/not eligible for free lunch and the highest scores in the country for those in the "not eligible" category."

I would hardly call that subpar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Yea its not fair to compare DC to STATES...but because its a district thats what usually happens, even so DC is bad when compared to other cities as well, a lot of the charter schools are a sham, even the elite one's in NorthWest that all the affluent whites are trying to get their kids into are subpar

Where do you live and where are your children enrolled?

Mitchellville/woodmore area

Did you miss this part?


"DC has a 50-point gap between eligible/not eligible for free lunch and the highest scores in the country for those in the "not eligible" category."

I would hardly call that subpar.

make sense, but is that due to the school system or just the highly educated majority white population in certain sections of the city? I always judge a system on how it does with its poorer residents. I"m curious to see the racial breakdown of those scores

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a black person it pains me to say its largely the percentage of poor blacks in DC that causes a lot of that last place finish. Many generations of low/no opportunity, discrimination etc. The fact is whites in DC have the highest score of all "states" on that website. So OP by your selection criteria (this website) DC has the best public schools in the country.

(Or maybe as others have said above, income and test performances correlate.)

Not entirely true...check the graduate rates for DCPS, and compare them to Baltimore City, BMORE tops DC in the Category...u telling me that DC is poorer than BMORE? Poor or not DCPS sucks regardless of income. Trust me those wealthy whites kids aren't getting a proper education either...I dont care what the school cheerleaders proclaim on this site

If you click on and go into District profiles you can compare DC to comparable cities. It is doing better than Cleveland, LA, Baltimore City and Detroit. It is lagging behind NYC, Chicago and Boston. I did not look at all the cities because I don't think some of them are comparable. I lived in Tampa, FL (Hillsborough County) and there is no way you can compare Tampa to DC. Therefore, some of the comparisons don't correlate. I don't know enough about Dallas, Houston, and others to have an opinion.

Having lived in Detroit, Cleveland, and Baltimore, saying that D.C. is "doing better than" those 3 isn't saying much at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Yea its not fair to compare DC to STATES...but because its a district thats what usually happens, even so DC is bad when compared to other cities as well, a lot of the charter schools are a sham, even the elite one's in NorthWest that all the affluent whites are trying to get their kids into are subpar

Where do you live and where are your children enrolled?

Mitchellville/woodmore area

And Mitchellville/Woodmore is behind other comparable suburbs. Does that mean every school in that area is subpar?

DC does fail a lot of poor children and has schools that are subpar. But not all of them are and the data clearly shows that. My kids are in hs now. Just a few years a go these numbers would have been vastly different. They are moving in the right direction which is a good thing. Of course they need to improve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a little confused -- people claim that there are good public and public charter schools in DC, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks DC public schools (including the 109 charters) below national averages in math, reading, science and writing.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

The only report that ranks DC charter schools separately is issued by the DC Public Charter School Board, which is hardly an independent source.

I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually looking for real facts -- where are people getting their data to support assertions that these public schools are high performing?

Yea its not fair to compare DC to STATES...but because its a district thats what usually happens, even so DC is bad when compared to other cities as well, a lot of the charter schools are a sham, even the elite one's in NorthWest that all the affluent whites are trying to get their kids into are subpar

Where do you live and where are your children enrolled?

Mitchellville/woodmore area

Did you miss this part?


"DC has a 50-point gap between eligible/not eligible for free lunch and the highest scores in the country for those in the "not eligible" category."

I would hardly call that subpar.

make sense, but is that due to the school system or just the highly educated majority white population in certain sections of the city? I always judge a system on how it does with its poorer residents. I"m curious to see the racial breakdown of those scores

What woudlbt racial breakdown do for you? Are you assuming there are not any educated black families in DC? The schools aren't failing the non-poverty kids and based on a recent DCUM survey, most people aren't supplementing their students via tutoring.